Adventures of an Underwater Photographer

Details: The time had come to fly out of the Maldives, and of course, no diving allowed. I stayed the final night at Hulhumale – close to Airport Island, and snorkelled the shallow reef fringing this man made island. Some nice coral in the channel between two islands.

Details: My last dive in the maldives, and this was a nice way to end. Banana reef was one of the first reefs to be dived apparently and brought fame to the Maldives as a scuba diving destination. A very colourful wall with loads of fish.

Details: An islamic holiday was underway today, and the place just goes into shut down. I managed to find an operator to take me out, and we agreed on a site that’s suppose to be a great dive. It was a different story when the boat owner decided he wasn’t prepared to travel that far and copped on with an offer to dive the airport wreck. I wasn’t happy…i’ve never been angry on a dive before but to spend my second last day diving in the wonderous maldives only to be looking at a pile of metal next to a trashed area of reef next to a man-made island just made me breath fire in my bubbles. Cue spoilt, ugly tourist. This dive made me loath wrecks even more than i already do…dont get me wrong, a wreck with history and interest fascinates me, but this was just a poor excuse for a tourist attraction.

Details: Villingilli is another resident island only a short ferry ride from Male. The accomodation on the island is pretty horrid, but on a budget you do what you can. There’s a local dive operator on the island and they are both nice guys. Unfortunately they were doing a OW course on the day i arrived, and they were taking the diver just to the House reef on the far side of the island. These resident island reefs are pretty trashed, but there were some good critters around to photograph still, and this moray eel and cleaner shrimp shoot are some of my favorite photos of the trip.

Details: A little dissappointed at only squeezing in 2 dives during the day, i decided to free-dive the house reef around maafushi to see what was around. A bit trashed but some nice fish and coral structure around. A few Lionfish made good subjects.

Details: We descended at this site to the view of loads of grey-reef sharks patrolling the depths at around 60m. This area had a strong current so wasnt the most relaxing of dives. Right towards the end i saw my only Manta easgerly passing over the shallow reef. I expected the Maldives to give me lots of opportunities to photograph mantas but this was it…one quick snap as it swam past. Luckily a pineapple moray eel made a good stationary subject.

Details: The second day on Maafushi, the dive store took me out to 2 local dive sites. The first was Kandooma Tila. The guides weren’t exactly sure of the location of the wall, so after jumping in and dropping into 35m, then swimming against a strong current towards the wall 200m away, i convinced the guide to surface and head back to the boat. I didn’t want to get a hit in the maldives! Take two after a 20 minute surface interval and we had a very impressive dive. Loads of schooling fish and a few white-tipped reef sharks that stayed just far enough away to be out of focal range. A turtle munched on some coral just as i was about to go into deco at about 12m. I would have liked longer at this site.

Details: Conditions for Sri Lankan diving weren’t crash hot, so being so close to the Maldives, it was foolish to miss out. All liveaboards seemed booked out, so after a bit of research i decided to check out how the locals lived and visited one of the resident islands that has only recently been opened up to the public. So i got the ferry down to Maafushi and checked into a B&B on the small island. Dives weren’t planned either, so i could only managed getting in a single dive on the first day at a Wreck called the Kuda Giri. Vis was nice, and generally a nice dive, but wrecks just dont do it for me…especially in an underwater wonderland like the Maldives.